Ask and you shall receive. Or could it be that Media Matters is just that predictable? The mainstream media have wasted no time swapping from campaign mode to coordinating attacks on outspoken conservatives with political ambitions. Sen. Ted Cruz is the reincarnation of Joseph McCarthy. Sen. Marco Rubio? He, um, drinks water. And Dr. Ben Carson, who stole the limelight from the president at the National Prayer Breakfast? Who wants to go first and clear the path for the Herman Cain ‘Uncle Tom’ treatment?

It looks like Media Matters will take the lead on this one themselves. That’s certainly an innocuous tweet; who wants to summarize the piece for us? It starts out like this: “Dr. Benjamin Carson is the latest in a long line of black conservatives — from Clarence Thomas to Herman Cain — relentlessly promoted and propped up by right-wing voices in the media.”

Yes, that’s about it. Seeing as this is a “research” piece from Media Matters, there’s no need to skip to the end to find out who the bad guy is — Fox News, obviously. It seems the network is working overtime to make Carson a star. The only problem: Carson was already a star. His speech at the National Prayer Breakfast was a runaway viral hit, leaving Fox racing to play catch-up. Who is this guy? David Limbaugh summed it up very well.

Finally,a self-reliant conservative decided to make this every bit as political as Obama does. Yes, we had a voice. Benjamin Carson.

But, he’s black! Media Matters did some research and managed to find liberals willing to explain how important Carson’s race was to conservatives who didn’t realize they cared. Take this analysis from The Atlantic … please: “Though many commentaries have tried tiptoe around it, it’s impossible to pretend there’s no racial dimension involved in a successful black conservative castigating the liberal black president,” wrote David Graham.

Or how about this gem from The Grio’s Joy Reid? “If you want to be Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, any brown or black person who is willing to say conservative stuff, this is your moment,” she told Ed Schultz. “You can make a lot of money, get a lot of attention, get a lot of love from the right, because they really do need brown and black faces to start saying this script.”

So, the reason Carson is so exciting to conservatives isn’t because of what he said, but because he’s a black man willing to criticize a black president?

Dear @mmfa, can you confirm that you chose @owillis to write the Carson hit piece so you could say “But the guy who wrote it is black!”

Ah, insightful. If Media Matters wants to do some real research into the popularity of Ben Carson, we’d suggest they watch his speech again — or better yet, just listen. The color seems to be too much of a distraction.